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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Sri Lankan court on Tuesday sentenced 15 people to between 200 and 260 years of rigorous imprisonment for their roles in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, more than seven years after suicide attackers struck churches and luxury hotels across the country. The eighth defendant, Abdul Manaf Mohamed Firdous, received the longest term, 260 years of rigorous imprisonment. Four defendants were sentenced to 240 years each: Mohamed Sariboo Adam Lebbe, known as Gafoor Mama; Hayathu

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka- A magistrate in northern Sri Lanka on Tuesday gave the police more time to investigate an alleged mass grave on Mandaitivu, an island off the Jaffna Peninsula where dozens of young Tamil men disappeared after being detained by the army in 1990. The case has been before the courts for a year without an excavation. Magistrate Aneeba Rajeev of the Kayts Magistrate’s Court adjourned the case until Nov. 10 after officers from the Jaffna District Crime Prevention Police said they n

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A three-judge panel of the Colombo High Court on Tuesday convicted 15 men over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, in which suicide attackers struck three churches and three luxury hotels, killing more than 260 people and wounding hundreds more. Nine other defendants were acquitted and ordered released. The court adjourned after delivering its verdict and was expected to hand down sentences for the 15 convicted men later on Tuesday, after hearing statements from them. Among t

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka: The office of Northern Province Governor Nagalingam Vethanayahan has acknowledged that the building it occupies does not have a Certificate of Conformity. The governor has repeatedly directed local authorities to act against businesses that operate without one. The admission came in a reply to a request under the Right to Information Act filed on Aug. 20 by Kumaravadivel Guruparan, a Jaffna attorney and former head of the law department at the University of Jaffna. He asked w

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka —Four opposition lawmakers, three of them representing minority communities, plan to withdraw from a parliamentary committee set up to break the long deadlock over Sri Lanka’s provincial elections, accusing the government of using the panel to further delay elections that have not been held in any of the country’s nine provinces since 2014. The lawmakers, Mano Ganesan, Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, Nizam Kariapper and Ranjith Madduma Bandara, are expected to notify the committee’s

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is facing criticism after a telephone call he made on Monday to Sivarasa Anojan, a Sri Lankan worker reportedly sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, was held on speakerphone in front of the prisoner's family and supporters. On the call, Anojan argued that Saudi Arabia had no grounds to prosecute him over a Facebook comment because the exchange involved Sri Lankans and began in Sri Lanka. Some critics said Premadasa had exposed the words of

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Monday that his government would send a formal written appeal to the king of Saudi Arabia asking him to pardon a Sri Lankan Tamil worker who was sentenced to death in the kingdom over a Facebook post that Saudi authorities deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. The worker, Sivarasa Anojan, a Tamil from eastern Sri Lanka, was initially sentenced to five years in prison and fined 3 million Saudi riyals, about $800,000. His family,